Route Voice and Text over Wifi on your smartphone

Introduction

So i have an iphone on at&t and at home i have no service. This lead me on a quest to get my calls to route over my home internet/wifi connection. Sure i knew about skype and viber and all the others but those suck because it requires the other party to have the same app and if they don't, or if its a land line or dumb phone, it would cost money to get a "real" line to call them.

So i researched and found an app called Talkatone. It uses your google voice account and The google chat service to route calls AND text messages over wifi for free!

Steps
(5 total)

1

Google account

I made a new one, specifically for my calls. but of course you can use an existing google account.

2

Activate Google Voice Service (free)

it will ask you if you want a new or to use an existing. choose new.
follow the prompts, it will help you make a new number, then it will ask for a forwarding number, you'll need to put in a legit number , then it will verify by calling that number.

Forward calls through the Google chat service

check the box that says "google chat" under the forward calls section (part of the "phone" tab

ok done with the computer side of things.

4

Download Talkatone (iOS)

Download the Talkatone app. (free) I beleive they have an Android version as well.

5

Run Talkatone

run talkatone and the wizard will guide you through whatever needs to be done. sign into the google voice account etc...

you'll notice it will warn you about the "forwarding through google chat " thing. no worries you already did that.

Conclusion

Now you can make calls and text with zero signal, and it routes all over wifi. This doesn't use any minutes/texts ! If you use talkatone even when you have service it still routes calls/text over the data connection so it still doesn't use any minutes. Yes, this is a VOIP solution BUT unlike Skype or the others, you don't need the other party to have the same app for it to be free. The call quality is less than stellar but its good enough.

Also, i would imagine( i haven't done it) that by using this method, you can turn your ipad or ipod touch into a phone if you had a Bluetooth headset.

It sounds like a good idea, until you realize that your texts have your new Google Voice number as the "from" number. Nobody will know the texts are from you until all of your contacts are familiar with your new number.

In other words, it's still a hack.

The technical limitation is silly. What the hell is a text message if it's not data? Not being able to send "text" over a "data" network is illogical.

A vendor claims Ciscos hardware routers would out perform Sophos firewalls as gateway devices. Each vendor claims their stuff is superior. What do you think, is the hardware advantage enough to overcome the extra hop/processing cost?